This paper explores the role of political stability on fiscal policy choices in a time-series analysis over 158 years on the Swiss federal level. We argue that the fiscal-commons problem of public finances is affected by the time-horizon of a finance minister. Arguably, the incentives for an...

Wilhelm Röpke war ein Verfechter des Freihandelsgedankens und gegen jede Form des Kollektivismus, aber auch ein überzeugter Europäer, dem in ferner Zukunft das Ordnungsmodell des Schweizer Föderalismus als Zielvorstellung für Europa vorschwebte. In Währungsfragen war er skeptisch...

We investigate the political determinants of risk premiums which sub-national governments in Switzerland have to pay for their sovereign bond emissions. For this purpose we analyse financial market data from 288 tradable cantonal bonds in the period from 1981 to 2007. Our main focus is on two...

The distinct characteristic in James Buchanan’s thinking about federalism in contrast to the traditional theory of fiscal federalism is his view about fiscal competition. In this paper, it is demonstrated that this thinking went through three stages. From the 1950s to the beginning of the...